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ryanjams

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I had a USPS shipment ghost on me that was en route from Portland, OR to an old coworker out on Nantucket, MA. Contents were a Markin 240 gyuto in WX-15 with a black and white ebony handle, Kochi 210 stainless clad ku gyuto, and a Masamoto KS 240 suji with blonde horn. I took it to the post on the 10th, shipped priority, but my local post office never did a departure scan (last time I click and ship, seriously) so it could be anywhere along the way and I'm out of luck regarding an insurance claim. They keep telling me to be patient, it will get there eventually, but I'd have expected to see some kind of scan by now.

I'm hoping my missing package request and consistent pestering of both local offices, as well as USPS customer service, can help shake it loose, but it's impossible to get in touch with anyone at the respective distribution centers to push any further. They were in a shipping tube, so it seems plausible that they rolled off of a sorting machine and are lost under some equipment, or something like that. Anyways, I figured I'd post here for any more advice y'all might be able to provide, and to tip the community off, get more eyes on eBay, local listings, etc. in case they "fell off a truck" somewhere.

Guess you might be seeing some more BST listings from me in the near future to help recoup losses. 😞 Here's a few dumb videos of my messy kitchen and the knives in question--with a brief cameo from my Haburn stainless damascus wedding band.

https://streamable.com/7j8mlghttps://streamable.com/hmfl75https://streamable.com/lcu3lv
Thanks all
 
Here's to some good luck for ya. Hate to see this kind of loss.

This would be lesson 2 for me to remember:
1: never ship to anyone that uses a 3rd party to forward the package without total disclaimer of damage or loss.
2: never ship in a container that can roll away on it's own.
 
USPS is a complete mess at the moment. Doesn't surprise me and getting scans can be hit or miss. I have regularly not had a single scan until the package is out for delivery. Doesn't really give you much comfort but its worth hanging in there for a few more days. Situations like this will create problems when the package truly is AWOL and you need to make a claim. The cynic in my makes me think USPS do this intentionally to avoid payouts. Good luck
 
I mean, the shipping tube is super sturdy and seems like one of the safest ways to pack, if it's done right. I've sent and received them many times, without issue. But if I had to guess what happened, it's in the guts of some automatic sorter where it fell off a belt or something. Yeah, I suppose this can be a general advisory as much as anything. I know times are hard down there, but USPS is really slipping lately. My Ittetsu I recently sold was scanned as delivered, hours before it actually arrived, and the correctly addressed Haburn was delivered to a neighbor's house. I'm about over it.
 
This happened to me on a comet. Took a month and a half but it showed. Be patient. Also if click n ship is great but I always drop off at post office and get receipt.
 
parbaked said:
THIS!
Shipping tubes are great for knives, except that they are hard for USPS to scan.
Often they don't update tracking until the destination PO manually enters the info.
Click to expand...
Not just shipping tubes. The lack of tracking info is not the result of using a tube, though maybe doesn't help
 
Sorry to learn about your issue. If it makes you feel better the exact same thing just happened to me with USPS, when shipping a knife via a poster tube. The package was never scanned at the local office and showed "label created" for 2 weeks then randomly appeared at the buyers doorstep (9405528206334065855660).


Make sure you go here and file a missing mail case. They start working on finding the package. Best of luck!
 
One of the problems is that the recipient can’t get USPS to do anything. The investigation has to be initiated and pursued by the sender (seller). Once he has your cash he has a lesser incentive to pursue the claim. USPS is pretty well useless as far as I can see. Shipping with them is a crapshoot ... most arrive ... some don’t. The thing that gets me is that USPS either has the package and refuses to trace it properly, or the package has been stolen. I don’t see any other alternative. I wonder how many hundreds of millions of dollars of items shipped with USPS simply disappear each year ... perhaps to turn up on eBay a few months after it disappears.
 
And USPS now gives the option to purchase 'premium' tracking. What a joke.
 
Me neither but the last one I sent out looks like someone played soccer with
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Brian Weekley said:
The investigation has to be initiated and pursued by the sender (seller). Once he has your cash he has a lesser incentive to pursue the claim.
Click to expand...

Part of the problem here might be the insurance issue. Obviously I don’t know what cases you’ve had to deal with, but I’ve become more hesitant over time about shipping uninsured, especially internationally. I know the taxes that Canadians have to pay on things coming into the country are quite high, and I get wanting to avoid them by having the sender declare at a low value, without insurance. But as a seller in the US, I’d only be willing now to do that with the understanding that the buyer assumes full responsibility if something goes wrong. I mean, I’ll be happy to file an insurance claim, and inquire a couple times about the state of the package. But if it turns into a long saga that would have been avoided if I had just shipped insured, which is what I wanted to do anyway, that’s another matter.
 
Just wait. I sold some razors to a dude on eBay a few months ago. The post office isn't doing departure scans and they have slow spots all over the place but Massachusetts is especially bad. Long story short I refunded the guy's money after four weeks. He emailed me two days later that he had received them. The post office never updated the status until they were delivered, I was sure they had been swiped out of the bin.
 
  • Wow
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Can you use those tubes with Click n' ship on USPS?
 
USPS is a mess right now. I have 2 packages that were shipped last month that hasn't shown any tracking movement for 3 weeks...
 
I've shipped 6 knives from Canada to the US in the last three months. Worst I've seen was a one week delay in customs. Every knife was tracked without issue. All were marked as gift and kitchen utensil on the customs paperwork so that may have helped. All were declared at value.
 
Declaring full value into the US is not a problem. We don't pay any more for more value. When we send international, insurance is very expensive. On top of that receiver, depending on the country has to pay customs depending on the value. Because of this, some buyers request sellers to declare very low value. In this case the seller can't insure. If the buyer requested low value and basically no insurance in order to not pay for shipping and save on customs then the buyer can't be upset at the seller if the knife is lost. The seller van file complaints and such, but at the end of the day very little can be done.
 
This has happened to me a couple times. When our PO gets busy, the teller will have you put your pre-paid stuff in a pile at a vacant window. They scoop it up when it quiets down. I was always concerned about theft, so stopped leaving it and started waiting in line and asking for a receipt. Before I started waiting for a receipt, several packages were not scanned for acceptance. (I think the tellers just throw them in a cart instead of scanning them and depend on somebody down the line to scan.) They arrived. Tracking info was wonky or non-existent. (I suspect a package that wasn't acceptance-scanned doesn't update online in the same way as one that was.)
So, three options:
(1) Shipped, but no scan
(2) Stolen from the PO
(3) Lost
If you handed it to the teller, then maybe strike #2?
 
Wow well I’d love to help pile the poo on USPS right now.

It may have started at my end though. Possibly yet doubtfully I selected shipping instead of collect in store, filled out my address anyway (maybe this toggled the selection) and address ended up wrong (nonexistent address).

As m1k3 said, signatures aren’t happening at the moment. Rather than returning to sender due to a nonexistent address, delivery confirmation tells me knife was delivered to another house down the street. Mail lady says she didn’t leave it at the house it was tagged at but she’s not sure where she left it. (neighbours all deny getting it and knife has vanished).

USPS does nothing. Calls to the customer service line of my local branch ring unanswered. Emails never get returned. Our regular mailman (knife came on his day off) has tried to pass my contact to his supervisors but no one follows through. I even went to the post office and left my details with a clerk there to pass to his supervisor... crickets.

I would avoid at all costs.
 
Been waiting for a knife from Aframes in Hawaii since June 13. USPS to Hong Kong. It took two weeks to get from Mililani to Honolulu. Last scan July 5. I'm hoping for delivery before the entire USPS gets dismantled. Not much hope for my absentee ballot.
 
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